Leaving, on a jet plane.....

Don't know when he'll be back again. After a six week visit, during which his first grandson was born, my father-in-law is returning to Singapore.

It's been an exciting time - nothing like the arrival of a new born to turn your life upside down, inside out and back to front. And the first eight pages of the Gazette made for relatively interesting reading for once.

For a start, there was the election coverage. For me, it sums up the essential problem the LibDems have. For a start, it's certainly true there are parts of Brentwood where it doesn't matter who or even what is running, stick a blue rosette on him/her/it and they will get elected. And usually they don't need to bother counting the votes, just weighing them. I gather from my limited reading that this was practically the case for all the wards in the borough until the LibDems came in and organised well at the ground level. A few years ago, they actually had control of the Borough Council. Last week though, they won one out of 13 wards being elected - six of which had previously had LibDem councillors. While they are making gains elsewhere in the country, their gains were pretty much cancelled out by their losses. It's almost as though people vote LibDem in the hope that the other party (Tory or Labour) are making a mess of running the council, and then discover that the Liberals are no better and go back to their original choice.

Secondly, there was coverage of Brentwoods most wanted job, The Apprentice.
As the Gazette wouldn't have known who won, being printed on Wednesday morning, it didn't spill the beans on that, but the profiles were interesting. What was more interesting was Karen Bremner's blog on the two finallists - she was clearly no fan of Michelle, who won. There is a part of me though that feels Karen is very embittered over her firing - yet her own comments on her blog make me feel Sir Alan got that one right at least - witness her comments on the advertising task.